Hey everyone, I'm new here so I hope this isn't a topic that was recently posted elsewhere, but I was wondering what tips and tricks you all utilize to pare down your adventure deck. I picked up Talisman about 6 weeks ago and so far my friends and I have played about 2 games per week. I have The Reaper, Ice Queen and Sacred Pool expansions. I'm debating whether I'll get the board expansions as I don't know how well that would go over with the less serious players within my circle of friends.

I'm interested in what sort of things you leave in/take out of the Adventure Deck in order to create different styles of play. I was the one who initially bought into the Talisman franchise, so luckily around my group, what I say goes as far as play rules. Some of the strategies I've employed are probably a bit weird or nonsensical, but seems to be working so far....

The way my friends seem to want to play is to keep the game to under 2 hours, while still having a clear victor. One friend in particular cant stand to play more than 1 hour. I'm trying to invite him less as the game is clearly meant to be played for several hours. However, even after 2.5 I'm ready to call it quits myself. So most of my strategies are to keep the deck moving fast.

I have total about 170 cards in the Adventure deck, with the other expansions all combined, that means I probably have about that same amount not being utilized at any time.

Firstly, all the doubles of cards, with the exception of gold bags cards, I took out. So there is only 1 copy of each card in the deck.

Second, I took out all of the level 1 monsters and all the level 5+ monsters, including all dragons. This seems a bit harsh, but I was finding that A. Strength 1 monsters were simply beaten on the spot and a level 7 monster simply lingered on the board forever and took up space. Having 2, 3, 4 level monsters seems to make play a bit easier and faster.

Third, the majority of the nasty cards have been removed. Though I did keep in a few negative strangers and events. But cards like Cursed Hag are right out. I seemed to have personally drawn that card EVERY time I played until I got sick of it and removed it.

Forth, all purchasable weapons, armor and extras (water bottles, rafts, etc..) were removed and when I got the Sacred Pool expansion, I also eliminated all the stables cards. These have now been shuffled into the purchase deck and stables decks. The trade off with this is that now the 4 corners of the board each contain a store and stable where anyone who lands there has the option of purchasing whatever they want, per the prices listed by the blacksmith, market day, etc.... further, those types of cards were completely removed.

Fifth, I took out the talismans from the deck. Now you can only get them from the Warlock's Cave. This is only like 3 cards, but every little bit helps. Also, the excess gold cards (treasure map, treasure chest) were removed. Believe it or not, when you only have 170 cards, there are alot more gold bag cards than you'd think.

The deck is pretty lean now, but I feel, its made the game a lot tighter in terms of playability. I'm sure there are some who would consider these strategies horrible. I'm just interested on what measures others have taken.

When I got The Reaper and Ice Queen expansions, we did try to play with ALL the adventure cards. This lead to pretty much a 4 hour stalemate as no one was leveling up fast enough.

Your thoughts?

Those are all pretty decent ideas to speed up the game.

Personally I think there is too much gold in the game, I'd take out gold bags LOL. If you want gold go into the highlands and collect trinkets.

Yeah, I know what you mean about the gold thing. With a deck of only 170, gold cards come up quite a bit. Then if you're doing a job that is gold heavy, so to speak, such as Leprechaun, Dark Cultist, or Alchemist, that just adds to it.

I don't have The Highlands expansion yet. I am a little loth to purchase it because really, only me and one other friend like the game enough to justify using a board expansion. My other friends are a bit fair weather about it.

Der1 said:

There aren't that many high Str Enemies that culling them would make it faster. If someone drew the Warrior or Troll, all they need is a weapon to have a decent shot of beating a Dragon for an immediate +1 Str. Removing those high Str Enemies means instead of one turn to gain a stat, you need 2 at minimum, assuming you draw a Str Enemy the following turn.

Der1 said:

For me this would remove all point of playing Talisman. Sure, it hurts when I draw it but those are also one of the way the leader can be pegged back without other players needing to be involved (which they might not be able to do).

Der1 said:

I play base + Reaper + Dungeon + Frostmarch + Highlands and average 75 minutes with 3 (going past 2 hours is almost unheard of these days). To me it's not the Adventure deck, it's the players that add up time. Each turn should really take a max 10 seconds and unless there is combat, even that's slow-playing in my book.

Hello,

you made a bunch of changes that made the game almost unrecognizable. In any case, I will just comment your changes in terms of gameplay impact, according to my experience with this game.

I anticipate that I play with all expansions and no adaptations at all, except the 5-point exchange trophy rule that is suggested in the Rulebook.

Der1 said:

Yes, this is true. Only a few cards are drawn each game now, but this is normal I think. Just take care they're shuffled properly, with no Object or Followers piles resulting from previous games.

Der1 said:

I don't understand how this could speed up things. There are not many card doubles, except Places and Strangers that allow you to spend your money (Livery Stables, Arcane Archive, Pedlar), so don't complain that there's too much Gold (you left most of these cards out, in the end). I also don't understand why a double-copy Enemy should make the game longer. You need Enemies to defeat, always.

Der1 said:

Talisman is too variable to say that in the majority of cases a Str 1 Boar will be beaten and a Str 7 Dragon will crush you. The funny thing is when these rules are broken by some improbable die roll, which suddenly puts a player in a big advantage or disadvantage. It is part of the game and to flatten Enemies is simply giving advantage to Str 2 Characters. What shall the Troll do with his Str 6 when there are no Dragons to fight? Where is the real plus of his only good attribute?

Der1 said:

These cards are called "equalizers of the game" and are particularly "loved" because they can stop or slow down a strong Character. Sometimes they make up for a bitter end for weak Characters. They are most necessary but if you don't like the game's harshness leave them out. I also got sick of the Hag because it made me lose a lot of the first games, but I kept her anyway. Now with many cards it is rare to see the Hag in a game.

Der1 said:

Well, this makes buying easier and is a good idea to achieve your purpose.

Der1 said:

In my first games I did the same thing with Talismans and it worked (but not to speed up things...). I added Talismans back in the deck only with 5 or 6 players (it has no sense to have less Talismans than players in a game, it is not fair). Now we have lots of cards and I leave the Talismans in the deck. They don't show up very often.

Most players feel that there's too much Gold in this game. I'll never understand this, never. When I have Gold I always spend it quickly and want more. Last game (which I won) earned me only a Bag of Gold. I even lost my starting Gold by being toad-ed by the Transmutor. One player had a pile of Gold because he landed repeteadly on the Cave on the main board and in the Highlands' Cave too, but he could have it well spent at Livery Stables and Village. IMO Players need to learn that they should spend their Gold fast and plan movement accordingly.

Der1 said:

This is a common problem when the players are unexperienced and take a lot of time reading and understanding the cards, in particular the Spells that they must interpret alone. Moreover, unexperienced players can't evaluate when's the right time to have a shot at victory. My first 10 games of Talisman were all around 4 hours, event 6-7 in some cases. We always played at Sundays because it was impossible to find time in other weekdays. We lost some casual players in that period and when I see them again and tell them that we play Talisman in the middle of the week and that we require between 1 and 3 hours, with 2 hours being the typical playing time (3 or 4 players), they say: "Really?"

But hey, 2,5 hours is not too long for a boardgame; my Descent and WoW:TBG sessions last 6-8 hours and there's no way to speed up things. Hours fly away when playing and that's the good thing about it. If your group likes shorter games and players are not getting more and more eager after each game, and tend to complain for the playing time instead, perhaps Talisman is the wrong choice for you. The length is less predictable than most other games. But I'm sure that if you like the mechanics and the classic fantasy / backstabbing feel of this game you will dig into it and appreciate it more when everybody's got the experience.

Wow way to ruin a great game. the fact that there are so many cards in my opinion is a great thing, back when i played 1st ED talisman in the 80's every game tended to be the same as each card came up in nearly every game.. Now however each game is totally different...

taking out monsters and bad cards is crazy, the cursed hag is supposed to be nasty makes u work and laugh (and yes i always get her too, guess thats her curse) dont take the essence of talisman away.. Give it back its essence, before all those 1 and +5 monsters hunt u down while u are sleeping, and the last thing u see is the Hags face smiling down on you..

Would love to see a list of the nasty cards u took out

...i take it u left all the really nice ones that help you out in..my god if u want to speed it up just set the game up get yr friends round and then announce right i won, because that is how hollow that game would feel to me if the deck was so danger lite..

Srry for the mini rant not feeling to well right now..

I agree with the people here.

The best thing what you can do is change the trophy's to 5

You can finish it then in 2 hours i think.

I can't imagine removing cards at all.

Why don't you just start with a few extra strength and craft points if you want the game to be shorter?

I've removed only 2 cards from my decks - Ekor, and Shiver Nymph. That's all. Because that two cards are annoying.

They are supposed to be annoying!

Well, as if my first announced strategies weren't bad enough, a friend and I came up with an idea of making 2 decks! One for the outer ring and one for the middle ring. The Outer ring employs all the strategies named above. So all the monsters are middling and few bad events, etc.... but the secondary deck is for the middle ring. This is deck is about half the size of the outer ring deck and employs many of the cast off cards that were thrown out from the above strategy. We played it that way tonight and it seemed to go really well. It was fun to get a lot of those surprises back like the Craft: 10 Demon and such. It really separates the two levels because you you know you have to be a certain level to get to the inner ring, then once you traverse that for a bit, you know you're more ready to get to the middle. I can pretty much bet I'll get a lot of flack for this as well, but it seems to have made things run more smoothly. Anyone else do this?

The problem is that the Middle Region is tough enough without the need to throw in all the toughest Enemies and Events!

If it ain't broke don't fix it lol

Ell.

removing that many cards from the game doesn't make sense to me. getting the hag or drawing pestilence happens. so does drawing the demigod. my advice would be to put a time limit on your games. after an hour or two add up your total strength and craft including items/followers that constantly add to your stats. who ever has the highest wins. tie equals a duel to the death. maybe the player with the highest total gets to fight another player of their choice. i understand where you are coming from regarding games taking to long. it is a problem my group has dealt with and have been unable to solve.